I Cannot And Will Not Recant

This declaration was made on 18 April 1521 before the Diet of Worms, an imperial assembly convened by Emperor Charles V after Luther's excommunication. Asked to recant his writings, Luther refused unless he could be shown his errors from Scripture and plain reason. The official transcript preserves the core statement about conscience being captive to the Word of God; the famous closing words "Here I stand, I can do no other" appear only in later printed versions and were almost certainly not spoken verbatim at Worms.